This is the website of writer, editor, and kinda tall person D.J. Kirkbride.

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Keeping FRINGE Alive

Just over a week ago, FRINGE ended its little-watched but much-loved-by-those-who-did-watch-it five-year run. In my apartment, that resulted in two grown dudes trying not to openly cry in front of each other as a genuinely good show actually stuck the landing and wrapped up in fine form for once. (I’m looking at you, BSG.) My cat, however, seemed unfazed. Almost like she knew the show wasn’t really over. (Or she’s just a cat and doesn’t get caught up in serialized sci-fi storytelling. Who knows?)

It’s also worth nothing that, after around seven months of feeding and sheltering her, I still hadn’t settled on a name for my cat, who didn’t seem to mind that, either. Then I found a way to take care of this name issue while also keeping FRINGE alive, at least in my day-to-day life of denial.

My cat’s name is now “Belly,” after FRINGE’s great meglomaniacal scientist frenemy William Bell (originally played with just the right amount of illogic by Leonard Nimoy). My FRINGE season six plotline starts off when FRINGE’s other great but-slightly-less-meglomanical scientist Walter Bishop (the robbed-by-the-Emmys John Noble) mysteriously appears in the Harvard lab and takes Belly out of amber (lots of unanswered questions brought up in this sentence, but watch just the show) in order to drop acid with him in honor of the good old days.

An LSD bender later, and Astrid (the under-utilized but always terrific Jasika Nicole) arrives at the scene to find that a hallucinogen-addled Walter has put Belly’s brain inside an extremely fluffy kitty cat!

Several things in this scenario surprise the crap out of Astrid (to avoid spoilers, I won’t point them out), but kitty Belly has already run off! We end the season six premier with Belly, now a excessively fluffy, constantly g-damn shedding kitty cat being adopted from an animal shelter and now in my care.